'Reign' - and this might sound cheesy, but it's a dream I had. I dreamt everything that happened in that song, woke up, and wrote the song.
My dad grew up in western Nebraska. I'd visit all the time as a kid, and it's very much like the Wild West. It felt to me like a cowboy movie. Stuff like that made me become this dreamer at a young age.
On 'City Music', I wanted there to be grit, and I wanted it to be loose, and I wanted there to be mistakes.
I wanted to write a song called '#1234' that would act as a homage to The Ramones.
I remember my mom telling me that when John Belushi died, my dad cried. I remember thinking that was strange as a child, but today, I kind of get it.
I love Baltimore. It is a city with a giant heart and has remained one of my favorite places to keep returning to on tour. It is unique and beautiful, and you can't mistake it for anywhere else in the world - Baltimore is one hundred percent Baltimore.
'Rock Bottom Riser' by Smog - I was just in Europe, and my jet lag never really went away. I wasn't sleeping very much. Then one night, my girlfriend saw a Bill Callahan show in L.A. and took a video of that song and sent it to me. I was just listening to it over and over - it was comforting.
When I'm out having the experiences, that's exactly what I'm doing: having the experiences. Then I can later reflect and write.
I do not know what kind of relationship Jim Carroll and The Ramones had, though I imagine they all knew each other, as they ran in the same scene.
I had a lot of jobs in New York. I worked in a cafe, and I did bike delivery, and I was a mover. And I babysat, which was really cool in some cases and really insane in others.
My favorite songwriters are all solo artists.
You're at LaGuardia, and you get in a cab, and it's taking you into Brooklyn, and you're on the BQE, and you can see the skyline, the whole skyline, and it's so beautiful.
On my first European solo tour, I was selling maybe 50 tickets a city until I showed up in Paris and heard the show was already at 150 tickets, which, at the time, really blew my mind and took me by complete surprise.
My hair - it's baby thin and feathery and drives me crazy no matter what I do with it. It's weird because you see people with thicker hair that just kind of stays put, but if I'm in any sort of weather, I look like Bill Murray in 'Kingpin' when it starts to all come unleashed.
'Reign' is probably the oldest one on the record. I wrote that when I was 19. 'The Dead They Don't Come Back,' which is the last song on the album, I wrote when I was 20, and 'Harlem River' I just wrote last year. It spans from 2007 to 2012.
I just love the idea of never seeing a city before and seeing the glow in the distance, and it just looking frightening, like you're driving into a fire.
A lot of what I've written that's made its way onto my records I've written in Kansas, which is interesting because I've never written about Kansas. But I go have these experiences. and I'll be back at my parents house, and it's like I'm in a safe incubator.
As far as dream venues, I've played all the venues I'd love to play.
One of my favorite movie characters is Mother Sister from Spike Lee's 'Do The Right Thing.' It is such a beautiful name, and she is such a beautiful character, Mother Sister, the all-seeing eye over the block.
One of my first observations about New York that I was so fascinated with was that you'd be at a stoplight, and you're with everybody; there's a homeless dude and some weird celebrity and a cop and someone who looks exactly like you.
